Killer Minecraft
is a 1994 fighting game developed by Drillimation Studios and published by Namco as part of the Touhou Project series of games. Gameplay Killer Minecraft plays like many other fighting games, in which the player controls a character to beat an opponent in a one-on-one encounter. The game borrows the attack set of Street Fighter and is also inspired by the finishing moves from Super Smash Keyboards. There are also several features that distinguish it from other franchises: * A double energy bar: instead of winning two rounds, each player has two bars of energy. If a character finishes with his or her opponent's first life bar, the fight stops and resumes like a round, but the winning character still keeps whatever amount of energy he or she had at that moment. The player who depletes his or her opponent's second life bar wins the bout. * Automatic combos: In Killer Minecraft, many combos are automated. Rather than requiring the player to press a button for every attack within a combo, the computer will perform certain attacks within a sequence after key buttons are inputted. * Finishing moves: Bearing resemblance to the fatalities from Super Smash Keybaords, each character has at least two moves known as No Mercy (Danger Move in later revisions) to finish the opponent. One of these No Mercy moves can be executed at the end of a combo (which is labelled as an Ultimate Combo), when the opponent's life bar flashes red (when his or her second bar is going to be depleted), although it uses a different combination of movements. Another finisher is the Humiliation, that forces the opponent to dance (the dance style depends on the character), but this can only be used if the player has his or her first life bar. Killer Minecraft's finishing moves, while occasionally brutal, do not feature the level of violence typical of Mortal Kombat's Fatalities. * Ultra Combo: Another finisher; it operates like an Ultimate Combo, though this one allows the character to deliver a long string of hits as the combo finisher instead, usually surpassing 20 hits, and can sometimes reach upwards of 80 hits. * Combo Breaker: The player who is being caught in a combo may break out of it by performing a combo breaker move. The combo breaker is a designated special move of the player's character. A combo can be broken at either the auto-double or linker stage. To successfully break an auto-double, the player must use the breaker move at a strength lower than the auto-double itself (i.e. for a player to break a Medium auto-double they must use a Quick breaker). The combo can also be broken at the linker stage. At this stage the player can use any strength of breaker, making long combos a risky affair. Also, after performing a combo breaker, a white starburst will appear at the tip of the breaker's health bar, enabling advanced versions of some special moves that require a different command (e.g. Ataru Hori, instead of a regular green fireball, can shoot a red fireball). Plot Fuchscorp is a very powerful megacorporation which organises a tournament called Killer Minecraft. Along with regular participants, characters from Gensoukyou also fight in the tournament so their strength can be tested. Fuchscorp also discovers a technology to make bridges between dimensions, and the headmaster of Fuchscorp and enemy, Fred Fuchs, crushes everyone in the tournament. Development The first Killer Minecraft game began development as a Super Smash Keyboards game called Ultra Super Smash Keyboards 2. According to programmer Kenjirou Nasaya stated that it was going to be an update to Super Smash Keyboards 2. However, he wanted to add characters from Touhou Project to have the theme stand out. While coming up with plot ideas for the game, Takajima asked designer Yasuhiro Takemoto to take charge. Drillimation engineer Jun'ya Ohta had been experimenting with the 3D modeling software PowerAnimator. During development, Drillimation presented a tech demo of the models in action to Namco. However, Namco wanted Drillimation to use the anime-art style from Super Smash Keyboards, and changed the style. However, Ohta had shown the characters he has been modeling, and Namco gave Drillimation the support they needed to develop Killer Minecraft. Drillimation used Holinger-Z from Mr. Driller G, Wataru Hoshi came from the prototype that Drillimation created, who would later star in the 1993 danmaku shooter game Star Trigon, which Ohta also modeled. The character models for Kagami Hiiragi and Miyuki Takara were specifically modelled after Ohta began experimenting with special effects. As Karen Strassman, the actress who plays Miyuki, starred in an anime short film that Drillimation gave Hanna-Barbera the rights called Miyuki's Avalanche, which was originally titled Killer Minecraft. In an interview with Susumu Takajima, the current president of Drillimation Studios, stated that Kagami was originally supposed to be lava-based rather than fire-based. Before Magical Girl Team Lucky Star made the Japanese debut in 1981, Akira Kogami, one of Lucky Channel's hosts, went through a lot of changes before the final version. Akira was originally supposed to have blonde hair and was one time named Kiratchi. Puchi was one time named Toxin, Wataru was named Mr. Fist, and Tsukasa was one time named Akari. The Killer Minecraft arcade cabinet was a one-of-a-kind. Like most of Drillimation's games, it required an entire CD-ROM to store the full motion video sequences and CD-quality music. There was even a marketing employ saying if it ran on the Windows 95 operating system. However, the arcade boards were co-designed by Namco and Microsoft. The cutscene animation was produced by Drillimation Studios' animation development studio with production assisted by Kyoto Animation. The fighting system used in the Driller Engine 2000-based game caused the game to become a smash hit. The machine was highly expensive, but arcades across the world would make $1,000 per week. The bugs and glitches were tedious for the fans to discover. One notable glitch was with Kagami Hiiragi - a game breaking bug where an infinite combo can be performed without it breaking. The glitch had gotten so out of hand that Drillimation had to issue a ROM update that would correct the issue. Namco and Microsoft sent a team of engineers to manually install the update to all 17,000 Killer Minecraft machines across Japan, the United States, and Europe. Characters Category:Video games